Ugh. Annoying. Freaking. Crap. I meant to finish and upload this last night, but the second I looked away from the computer, my head told me it was going to explode if I didn't take some ibuprofin and go to bed. Tonight, sleep be damned. By George, I promised a chapter and with Bob and Jebus as my witnesses, there shall be chapterness.

And replyness.

Volital: That works out, then. I combined my old username with Comma, so I can still be a bloody muffin, I suppose, lol.
Madeline Cullen: I suppose that's what it meant. It's 11:56 here at the moment right now, it'll probably be midnight by the time I post it.
Marisol Akyri: And already working on more :D
ani-sand: Ah, muchos gracias :) I've been planning the Wedy and Aiber thing for ages, I'm glad I finally got to it.
ActionFry: Updated as soon as I could, and hoping to get one in tomorrow or the day after.

All rightio. Here be the chapter.

Disclaimo: See last chapter, can't be bothered to type all that again. And in my own defense, I think Wedy and Aiber both rock. This does not reflect anything about my feelings regarding them, as I thought Wedy was particularly awesome.
Warnings: Attempted murder, swearing, name-calling.
Quick Sum:
Katherine's out to kill; Wedy's amused; L's afraid for his life (or his sobriety) again; Light, Yagami-san, Mogi-san, and Aiber have no bloody idea what the hell's going on; Matsuda's choking on his damn soda; and Light's been chained to the leg of the sofa in his sleep. Fun times, yepyep.


At the sound of the voice from behind her, Katherine whipped her chair around. She had started to swallow a mouthful of coffee with abso-freaking-lutely impeccable timing. She choked on the coffee in surprise, causing her to receive odd looks from the rest of the team at this sudden employment of eccentric behavior. She now knew why she had recognized that name. Wedy. How could she have forgotten that name? She managed to swallow the coffee she was choking on, and then her mind moved over into immediately homicidal mode. This was a very bad thing to go with the accompaniment of her shock at the blond woman standing in the room.

"You – y-you – you– you fucking skank!" she managed sputter out in her combination of disgust and disbelief.

This made Matsuda choke on the soda he was drinking in surprise. Light, Yagami, L, Matsuda, Mogi, and Aiber all looked between the two women in a mixture of fear, confusion, and even possible amusement. Wedy only raised her eyebrows from behind her darkened sunglasses, which she lowered slightly to look at Katherine. Katherine's fists were shaking in agitation as she fought every voice inside her head yelling at her to steal Matsuda's gun and shoot Wedy in the face while he was distracted with the soda that had just attempted to enter his lungs.

Then she remembered Matsuda didn't have a damn gun anymore, anyway, so that thought definitely wouldn't be very much of a help to her.

"Nice to see you again as well, Kim," said Wedy kindly (though Katherine knew differently).

"It's not Kim," Katherine growled, an annoyed muscle above her lip ticking.

"Changed your name again? Talk about an identity crisis."

"Yeah, well… you're a stupid bitch!"

This was completely new to the investigation team. They had all seen Katherine get into arguments before. She always came up with witty retorts that drove the opposing party to forfeit. At the moment, however, all she could come up with was a number of swears that seemed to do nothing more than amuse Wedy, which only infuriated Katherine more.

"So tell me," Wedy said in a mock-kind voice, "how has your friend Pat been?"

And that was the straw that broke the camel's back. A series of events occurred in less than a second of time. Katherine leaped from her chair and started at Wedy, who backed up a few steps, but was miraculously not killed, as Matsuda and Light had managed to hold Katherine back at about three feet away from Wedy. After a minute of struggling, she wilted in her own defeat, though she was still scowling menacingly at Wedy. Light, who had been on the receiving end of her signature Murderer's Glare many times, was amazed that Wedy seemed to be highly entertained by it.

"If you ever say that name again, I'm going to cut your tongue out with a butter knife and feed it to a fish," Katherine snarled ferociously.

"That sounds painful," Matsuda whispered to Light, who nodded in agreement.

"It bloody well will be painful!" Katherine snapped at him, causing him to jump with a slight yelp to accompany this.

"So what is it this time?" Wedy said. "I know you were using the name Kimberly O'Connery on your credit cards and the deeds for your house."

"It's 'Katherine,'" she said, distain icing over her voice. "And that's what I've been going by for years, thanks. You just never knew anything about me because I didn't like you."

"That's awfully insulting. I was engaged to one of your best friends, after all."

There was more struggling after this statement. Despite her small size, she was hard to hold back, mostly because of how much (and how hard) she kicked and elbowed.

"Let– me–go!!!" she said between barrages of kicks. "I'm – going to – fucking – kill her!"

"Then I guess you know each other," said L.

"Definitely," said Wedy calmly, as Katherine's attempts to break free again withered. "Shall I explain?" she asked Katherine. She glared in response. "I'll take that as a yes. A few years ago, I had devised a plan to get a bit of money off of a bank in Ireland. I was a little low on cash and I needed at least one other person to help me with my plans. It's sort of hard to advertise that you need help breaking into a top security bank vault, so I was having a bit of trouble with things. I was stressed out, so I headed to a local bar, where I found a con artist bragging about his apparently incredible skills at breaking into any type of lock, anywhere, any time, completely undetected. He was already completely drunk, so it was easy to convince him to help. Of course, I had to employ a little con of my own for it to work. All in all, in the end, we ended up engaged. I had him to help me break into the bank, and in return, I left him and pawned the ring for a bit extra. It's in my line of work to carry out cons like that, and I'd done so before then, even. She's just angry that it was on her friend."

"He about drank himself to death after you left," said Katherine angrily. "You don't even give a damn? He ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning… under an assumed name, no less, but that's not the bloody point – when he got out, Don and Al and I had to go in shifts watching the poor bastard, had to destroy any and all alcohol that he could get to – which was hell on all of us – until he was all right. You're lucky he didn't succeed in killing himself, or you'd have been dead inside of a week. Whether it would have been me or a hired gun, you'd have been murdered, you stupid whore." She finally managed to jerk her arms out of Light and Matsuda's grips while their guard was down, but rather than attack Wedy as she so wanted to do, she turned and walked towards the stairs up to her flat.

"What did you expect me to do?" asked Wedy incredulously. "I didn't love him."

"Oh, I don't know, tell him the truth rather than call the next day and leave a bloody message on the answering machine?" said Katherine, looking back over her shoulder. "You didn't apologize for lying to him, for one."

"And I'm definitely the most honest person I know," she said sarcastically, crossing her arms. "And definitely sympathetic. I leave a full apology note every time I take something from someone."

"No bloody need for all that," said Katherine, glaring again. "And also, he'd probably have helped you break in without you lying. Trust me, even a few years ago, all four of us had more money than you've probably ever dreamed of having, or at least enough fake credit cards to account for nearly infinite amounts of money. Even back then, the three of them were just con artists as a hobby. It wasn't a profession anymore, they'd made it well enough to retire. They just liked screwing naive people out of money."

"You know, if your friend was such a good con artist, then why didn't he know he was being conned?"

"He was bloody drunk, you said it yourself!"

"And for the rest of the time?"

"He was trying to prove me wrong about you being a heartless bitch. I guess I was right after all!" Katherine said in a sarcastically cheerful manner, then turned and continued up the stairs.

Just thinking about his situation, L could tell he was in some sort of trouble. Now, he had not only placed her in the same living quarters as someone she considered to be the most annoying being on the face of the Earth, but he had also hired who was apparently her archenemy to work with the investigation team in place of her friends. True enough it was that he had done so before she had tried to talk him into getting her own spies to work for the team, but there was no doubt she would still be angry with him. He had been on the receiving end of her form of vengeance before, and he didn't particularly want to be there again.


The time that Katherine spent in the investigation room that day (only after Wedy had left the room) was mostly spent glaring at the computer screen and typing nearly hard enough to break her keyboard in half. She didn't direct her glowering in anyone's general direction. She didn't blame L, since he really had no way of knowing that she knew Wedy. She couldn't find any possible way to blame Light, though she wished she could have. Punching something seemed to be quite an appealing idea at the moment, and considering the only person in the room at that moment that deserved to be hit was him and he hadn't done anything to her, she would have to wait to hurt someone.

The only two in the room with her were Light and L. Light seemed close to falling asleep at his computer as it was. Everyone else had already headed off to catch a bit of sleep a couple of hours ago, as it was midnight now (hence why Wedy was gone, meaning that Katherine would probably become nocturnal for a while). However, considering Light was attached to an insomniac, he was having a few issues with the idea of sleeping. He was also complaining about his lack of sleep at that moment.

"Ryuzaki," he said, glaring over at the insomniac from his computer, "if you would just undo the handcuffs and put our floor on the monitors –"

"Impossible, Light-kun," L said, still wide awake and typing a mile a minute on his own computer. "Even when I had you under surveillance in your own room, you acted completely normal and criminals still continued to die. There is every chance you could still be Kira even if you appear to act normally."

"Even if I was Kira then, it's safe to say I didn't kill anyone while I was at home, or you would have obviously seen it. Even if I was Kira now, I wouldn't kill anyone if I knew I was being supervised. That would be idiotic."

"Shut up," Katherine snapped in an ill-tempered manner, causing both L and Light to look at her oddly. She looked back now, looking more exasperated than angry. "Light, just sleep on the damn couch. There are two of them. If I have to listen to you two argue about something as pointless as sleeping arrangements for even five more seconds, your heads are going to get knocked together."

"Uh – yeah," said Light carefully – despite his unwillingness to cooperate with L, he wasn't about to cross her with the knowledge that she had come close to murdering someone earlier that same day. "That would work, the sofas are comfortable enough…"

"And I suppose I could work on my laptop," said L, also at least slightly unnerved at the thought of crossing her while she was still at least remotely agitated.

Katherine breathed a sigh of relief when they both headed over to the couches. Within minutes, she was sure she heard at least a small bit of snoring, indicating her number one source of annoyance at that moment was out like a light (and she laughed quietly at herself the unintended pun within her strange train of thought). It was at around that time that she heard the rattling of a chain, then footsteps. Katherine raised her eyebrows when L sat back down at his desktop computer.

"Chain him to the couch leg?"

"For now," he said. "I didn't have enough information on my laptop to work with it."

"Oh," said Katherine with a sigh. "And here I was thinking you just missed me."

"Hmm?"

He looked over just as Katherine had slid her computer chair over by his. "Regarding the situation with Wedy," she said quietly, in case Light wasn't really asleep (and L looked slightly perplexed at the sudden change of subjects), "I'll put up with her on the condition that I can give Pat and Don inside information on the Kira case."

"That…" said L slowly, "won't be acceptable."

"… I see."

"If it were solely up to me, I would agree with it," he said. "It wouldn't be particularly intelligent of me, at the least, to believe you or anyone working with you is Kira at this point. However, the overall attitudes of the investigation team remain the same. Now that Light-kun isn't Kira, he strongly believes that you are. Yagami will agree with any inference his son makes. Mogi could believe it, but he doesn't say enough to give me any insight into what his opinions on the case are. It seems the only person aside from me and possibly Mogi that doesn't believe you are the current key suspect is Matsuda, and he's not particularly intelligent anyway."

"And because I'm being incriminated by them, anyone I'm working with could be the second Kira, meaning that Pat and Don aren't being trusted now either, so without consulting the rest of the team – who would be sure to vote against me – I can't give them any information."

"Correct."

Katherine nodded. "Then I might not be around for much longer." L widened his eyes for a moment involuntarily in surprise. "Well, you can't really expect me to work with her, can you?"

"Then don't work with her," said L. "You don't need to cooperate with her if you get along with everyone else on the team."

"I also don't get along well with Light. With the way his father sticks up for him, he and I are bound to start hating each other as well. Mattie thinks Yagami-san can do no wrong, and will therefore turn over to their side eventually. Then Mogi barely says a word and I don't trust any con artists aside from Pat and Don, so that puts Aiber out. And don't even get me started on Misa. You're the only person I get along with on the team now."

His eyes narrowed as he seemed to take a moment to think about this. "You're being more cynical than usual," he observed. "Why?"

Katherine shrugged and looked down at her knees. "Coupling the sudden arrival of Wedy with the fact that Kira's plan has officially advanced a step further and there's not much of anything we can do about it, then also partially that I have no one left to argue over stupid things with to relieve stress, I'm just a bit pissed. No big deal."

"It is quite a 'big deal,'" said L, sounding exasperated. "There are only two people on this investigation team who know exactly what's going on with the Kira case. You're one of them. That means that depression or anxiety aren't going to be acceptable, you need to be focused on pretending to do work on things you already know about, not murder plans for Wedy."

Katherine raised her eyebrows. "Is that an order?" she asked indignantly. "You decide you're not even going to consult me on who you're hiring to help us, and then you try to order me not to feel? I know you're an emotionless bastard, but that doesn't mean you're going to bloody turn me into one!"

His eyes returned to their normal size again. "I see." Her blood was reaching a boiling point now. "I apologize for inviting Wedy to join the investigation without saying much beforehand. I do very much like you and I definitely didn't do it to purposely anger you. Even so, it would make little to no sense to the investigation team for me to get rid of her now. They might suspect something if I did, which they would use as reason as to why you were never confined, causing them to lose faith in my investigating abilities. I'm not keeping her because I want to at this point. She is good assistance to the investigation, but I can't say I'm happy that I brought in someone that you hold such a strong loathing towards."

Though still glaring in the opposite direction, Katherine spoke. "I suppose I'm sorry as well, then. You do sort of have the right to order me, as you're in charge of the investigation and I'm just working for you. And I didn't mean to call you emotionless. Or a bastard. It just kind of slipped out."

"Nothing happens by accident," said L tonelessly, keeping focused on his computer.

"I'm going to hit you if you start quoting nineteenth century philosophers, I'm going to start throwing things at you," she said, though mildly amused. "I didn't say it was an accident, I just said it slipped out. You do act like you don't believe in human emotions half the time, so it wasn't a lie."

"It's better for my work as a detective –"

"I know, you don't have to make up any excuses for me, I understand. I'm also willing to bet it's because the only single person you ever used to see on a regular basis was Watari." He didn't reply. "Thought so."

Katherine slid her computer chair back over in front of her computer and stood up to instead walk over. So she would be level with him, she bent a little (though not much, considering her height). He looked over at her at this, his eyes wide and as stoic as they could have possibly been at any given moment. She smiled at the heavy bags around them that were really beginning to resemble a thick coat of eyeliner.

"You're really looking extra tired tonight," she said quietly. "You should really get a bit of sleep. And I am sorry. I've just been in an overall bad mood lately. I think I need a bit of sleep, maybe I'll be better tomorrow. I'll try to be a bit more on the stoic side around Wedy, as I know it's not your fault. Good night."

She kissed his lips gently for a moment before pulling away and heading for the stairs. He raised an eyebrow after her. Women were just too damn confusing, he concluded as he turned back to his computer. Too many mood swings.


And that's that! The question is, will Katherine and Wedy learn to get along before one of them turns up dead, or missing a tongue for that matter?

And further more, will Don or Pat discover Wedy is in Japan?

Will poor L ever understand the oposite sex?

Will Light wake up to find himself chained to the furniture and throw a bitchfit?

Who knows? Certainly not me. Well, I know the answers to the first two. The other two, however, shall remain a mystery, either forever or until next time.

I'm also working on Sketch and Mellow Out at the moment, so expect updates on those soon as well.